Dogs' heads maintain ancient wall craft

I RECENTLY saw at first hand how drystone walls should be built, when I joined the National Trust's Carneddau Warden, Dewi Roberts, to see ongoing wall building work at Blaen y Nant farm in the Nant Francon valley.

I RECENTLY saw at first hand how drystone walls should be built, when I joined the National Trust's Carneddau Warden, Dewi Roberts, to see ongoing wall building work at Blaen y Nant farm in the Nant Francon valley.

The biting autumn wind funneling down the Nant seriously dulled the senses, but the Trust's wallers, Kevin Chilvers and Malcolm Davies, deftly position stone in the cold wet mud. They are building a classic double-skinned wall with local poor quality rounded stone - or pennau cwn (dogs' heads)), as Malcolm called them.

The walls are capped with coping stones in an uneven fashion.

"It's slow going, but a waller can on average build around three square yards a day," said Dewi, and it's obvious from the fresh-looking stone walls that many hours have gone into this project.

The patchwork of walls in the rural Welsh landscape has evolved over many thousands of years. The first were small enclosures built around the dwellings of early farmers (the "Celtic" field system), while later efforts were crude medieval walls often built by monks, following natural features.

The last phase was the enclosure movement, when the large Victorian estates were created, often to the benefit of a few wealthy landowners. This left many poor smallholders within these areas to depend on the slate quarries for a living.

The rise in interest of drystone walling has also come at a difficult time. Dewi said: "You can put up a fence for £3-£4 per metre, but a wall will cost 10 times as much, and take a lot longer.

"But walling is very satisfying work," he added, as he stood next to a stretch he completed during a recent contest.

It's not surprising that support is needed, and CCW's agri-environment scheme Tir Gofal, together with the National Trust's whole-farm approach to conservation, help to reinstate and repair walls throughout Wales.

Nant Francon is also within a Historic Landscape, one of many across Wales registered for their outstanding landscape quality and historic interest. . Jonathan Neale is a feature writer for the Countryside Council of Wales